National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP)

The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) is the ongoing, national assessment of students' academic performance in the United States of America. It is administered annually by the National Center for Education Statistics of the U.S. Department of Education, under the policy direction of the National Assessment Governing Board. This program was formally created by the U.S. Congress in 1969 as a mandate to continuously monitor the knowledge, skills, and performance of the nation's children and youth. The NAEP measures how well students are meeting today's educational standards; it shows patterns of student achievement over time in core content areas, such as mathematics, reading, science, and writing, since 1969; it provides objective data of student performance for comparing states to each other and to the nation; it serves as a primary indicator of the impact of national and state educational reform efforts; it is a trustworthy information source about the condition of education in the United States for the general public, the U.S. Congress, and the U.S. Department of Education; and it provides student performance results used by professional associations and organizations, major newspapers, and journals.

As the nation's report card, NAEP measures and reports on a regular basis what America's 4th, 8th, and 12th graders know and can demonstrate. It is the only measure of student achievement in the United States by which one can compare the performance of students in one state with the performance of students in other states and across the nation. It provides objective data about students' performance at national, regional, and, as of 1990, state levels in mathematics, reading, writing, science, U.S. history, civics, geography, economics, and the arts; other assessments are pending.

NAEP was initially begun with a grant from the Carnegie Corporation to establish the Exploratory Committee for the Assessment of Progress in Education. The first national assessments were approved by the U.S. Congress and conducted in 1969. Voluntary assessments for the states began in 1990 on a trial basis, and in 2002, 2003, and 2005, selected urban districts participated in the assessments on a trial basis.

The Commissioner for Education Statistics, which heads the National Center for Education Statistics within the U.S. Department of Education, is responsible by law for carrying out the NAEP program. The U.S. Congress created the 26-member National Assessment Governing Board in 1988; this board, appointed by the Secretary of Education, but independent of the department, sets policy for NAEP and is responsible for developing the framework and test specifications that serve as the blueprint for the individual assessments. This board is a bipartisan group whose members include governors, state legislators, local and state school officials, educators, business representatives, and members of the general public. Contractors assist in carrying out NAEP operations.

Since 1988, the National Assessment Governing Board has selected the subjects assessed by NAEP. Specifically, the board oversees creation of the frameworks that underlie the assessments and the specifications that guide the development of the assessment instruments. The framework for each subject is determined through a collaborative development process that involves teachers, curriculum specialists, subject-matter specialists, school administrators, parents, and members of the general public.

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